Currently, the performance of the open source drivers are not on par with the proprietary driver in terms of 3D performance and lack certain features, such as reliable TV-out support. They do, however, offer better dual-head support (xf86-video-ati), excellent 2D acceleration, and provide sufficient 3D acceleration for OpenGL-accelerated window managers, such as Compiz or KWin. Currently, the ATI Catalyst package is available in the AUR.

If unsure, try the open source drivers first; they will suit most needs and are generally less problematic and flexible. (See the feature matrix for details.) For an overview of ATI's proprietary "Catalyst" video card driver, see ATI Catalyst; this article covers the open source drivers.

Naming conventions

ATI's Radeon brand follows a naming scheme that relates each product to a market segment. Within this article, readers will see both product names (e.g. HD 4850, X1900) and code or core names (e.g. RV770, R580). Traditionally, a product series will correspond to a core series (e.g. the "X1000" product series includes the X1300, X1600, X1800, and X1900 products which utilize the "R500" core series – including the RV515, RV530, R520, and R580 cores).

Differences between open source drivers

xf86-video-ati (radeon)

Works with Radeon chipsets up to HD 4xxx (latest R700 chipsets) as well as HD 5xxx (latest R800 chipsets).

Radeons up to the X1xxx series are fully supported, stable, and full 2D and 3D acceleration are provided.

Radeons from HD 2xxx to X4xxx have full 2D acceleration and functional 3D acceleration, but are not supported by all the features that the proprietary driver provides (for example, powersaving is still in a testing phase).

All cards from HD 5xxx (R800) and newer are supported, but for now, with 2D support only.

HDMI support will soon be implemented in xf86-video-ati over AtomBIOS.

xf86-video-radeonhd (radeonhd)

Driver for ATI R500 chipsets (Radeon X1000 series) and newer.

Written by Novell with specifications provided to the public by AMD.

Supports RandR 1.2 and is under heavy development. It does also support HDMI with sound (if your hardware is so equipped, except RV730 based chip sets).

Generally, xf86-video-ati seems to offer more consistent performance as compared to xf86-video-radeonhd and is more actively developed, so it should be your first choice, no matter which ATI card you own. xf86-video-radeonhd should be used as a "fallback" driver in case you encounter errors with xf86-video-ati and it should not be used as a primary driver - radeonhd's development has been unofficially halted. In case you need to use a driver for newer ATI cards, you should prefer the proprietary catalyst driver.

Note: xf86-video-ati is recognized as "radeon" by Xorg (in xorg.conf) and xf86-video-radeonhd as "radeonhd".

Installation and configuration

Installation

Note: If you have previously installed the proprietary driver, make sure to remove catalyst and reboot.

Following is probably not true since Linux 2.6.33, at least author didn't run into any problems: For newer ATI cards (R6xx and newer) extra microcode is currently needed. Grab radeon_ucode and radeon-initrd from AUR, build and install them and add Template:Codeline to HOOKS array in Template:Filename.

Re-generate your initramfs:

# mkinitcpio -p kernel26

Add Template:Codeline to the kernel options in the bootloader configuration file to enable KMS.

Reboot the system.

Late start

With this choice, KMS will be enabled when modules are loaded during the boot process.

Troubleshooting KMS

Generic problem solution

If your card often crashes when loading the radeon module, starting your login manager, entering desktop or crashes when you start 3D apps like glxgears you can try if the kernel boot option "pci=nomsi" solves your problems. See https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15626 for X200m cards.

Alternatively, module options can be specified in a file within the Template:Filename directory. If using the radeon module (Template:Codeline) disable KMS by creating a file containing the above code:

Renaming Template:Filename, which may include options that conflict with KMS, will force Xorg to autodetect hardware with sane defaults. After renaming, restart Xorg.

Performance tuning

The following options apply to Section "Device" in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

Tuning performance with xf86-video-ati

By design, xf86-video-ati runs at AGP 1x speed. It is generally safe to modify this. If you notice hangs, try reducing the value or removing the line entirely (you can use values 1, 2, 4, 8).

Option "AGPMode" "4"

ColorTiling is completely safe to enable and supposedly is enabled by default. People have noticed a performance increase when enabled via xorg.conf.

Option "ColorTiling" "on"

Acceleration architecture; this will work only on newer cards. If you enable this and then can't get back into X, remove it.

Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"

Page Flip is generally safe to enable. This would mostly be used on older cards, as enabling this would disable EXA. With recent drivers can be used together with EXA.

Option "EnablePageFlip" "on"

AGPFastWrite will enable fast writes for AGP cards. This one can be problematic, so be prepared to remove it if you can't get into X.

Option "AGPFastWrite" "yes"

EXAVSync option attempts to avoid tearing by stalling the engine until the display controller has passed the destination region. It reduces tearing at the cost of performance and has been know to cause instability on some chips.
Really useful when enabling Xv overlay on videos on a 3D accelerated desktop. It is not necessary when KMS (thus DRI2 acceleration) is enabled.

A fine tool to try is driconf. It will allow you to modify several settings, like vsync, anisotropic filtering, texture compression, etc. Using this tool it is also possible to "disable Low Impact fallback" needed by some programs (e.g. Google Earth).

Tuning performance with xf86-video-radeonhd

TODO

Powersaving

With KMS enabled

TODO (After kernel26>=2.6.34 passes to [core]

Without KMS

TODO

TV out

Since August 2007, there is TV-out support for all Radeons with integrated TV-out.

It is somewhat limited for now, it doesn't always autodetect the output correctly and only NTSC mode works.

First, check that you have an S-video output: xrandr should give you something like

HDMI with sound

Given that your hardware supports it, and you have installed xf86-video-radeonhd (note: The driver xf86-video-ati will soon get HDMI support.) you can insert the following into xorg.conf to enable HDMI with sound:

Restart X when you have done this, try to see if there is sound transmitted to TV via HDMI cable.

Connect your PC to the TV via HDMI cable (duh).

Use xrandr to get picture to the TV. Ex: xrandr --output DVI-D_1 --mode 1280x768 --right-of PANEL. Simply typing xrandr will give you a list of your valid outputs.

Run aplay -l to get the list of your sound devices. Find HDMI and note the card number and corresponding device number. Example of what you want to see: card 1: HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI], device 3: ATI HDMI [ATI HDMI]

Try sending sound to this device: aplay -D plughw:1,3 /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav. Be sure to change plughw:z,y to match your hardware number found with last command. You should be able to hear the test sound from your TV.

Note on RV730 and RV710

xf86-video-radeonhd does not support yet audio through HDMI for these chipsets, but work is in progress.

Troubleshooting

I encounter artifacts when logging into my DE or WM

If you encounter artifacts, first try starting X without Template:Filename. Recent versions of Xorg are capable of reliable auto-detection and auto-configuration for most use cases. Outdated or improperly configured Template:Filename files are known to cause trouble.

In order to run without a configuration tile, the HAL daemon must be installed and running, and it is recommended that Template:Package Official be installed.

I have switched from catalyst to radeonhd or radeon and some things don't work

First of all, don't panic. Uninstall catalyst, install xf86-video-radeonhd or xf86-video-ati and then reboot.

Make sure you are not using the xorg.conf generated by catalyst. Your original should have been backed up and you can recall it:

cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.original-0 /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Otherwise, stop your graphical server if running, and in a tty, type as root:

Xorg -configure
mv xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

and make sure you put the required options.

If it still doesn't solve your problem, know that apparently catalyst has the bad idea to replace Xorg files with symbolic links pointing to its own files. The easiest at this point is to uninstall all catalyst stuff (just to be on the safe side) and then to reinstall xorg, libgl, ati-dri and xf86-video-radeonhd or xf86-video-ati.

If it still doesn't work, then have a look into the forum, your problem might be a configuration issue.

Note: When you switch to xf86-video-ati or xf86-video-radeonhd, remember that you can login without xorg.conf as well (without problems in most cases), since Xorg can autodetect your settings. So xorg.conf is optional.

I have installed a free driver and my card is painfully slow

Some cards can be installed by default trying to use KMS. You can check whether this is your case running:

dmesg | egrep "drm|radeon"

This command might show something like this, meaning it is trying to default to KMS: